To the editor:

While I have no dog in this particular fight, it does go with everything wrong with education these days.

It is truly amazing how the Lindbergh educational cartel — the National Education Association — now recruits students to do its bidding. Even the former chairman of the Mehlville School District’s Finance Committee is getting in on the act. Now here is a man telling Lindbergh, a district that has been nominated or won about every award and kudos you can get for a district, how to have a constructive dialogue. LOL. That’s like Superintendent Jim Simpson trying to be a developer. But let’s get back to the students’ protest.

For that 2014 graduate, if you consider yourself getting, on average, a total 8.5-percent pay raise in the last two years unfair, then God help us. But let’s see how unfair, according to you, they are treated. The uninformed taxpayers should keep this in mind also. As an example, the starting teacher is paid $38,750 a year. Another person starting in a different business field is paid $38,750 a year.

So on a per-hour basis, the teacher who only works about 1,485 hours in a year, give or take, makes $26.09 per hour. The business person who works 2,080 hours in a year makes $18.62 per hour.

Hmm. Now let’s take that teacher’s retirement plan.

For the 2014 graduate, this is known as a defined-benefit plan.

The teacher after working to the ripe old age of 52 with the maximum amount of teaching years will receive roughly 80 percent of the last three years of average highest pay. I believe, too, that the cost of insurance is figured in this calculation. And that is for the rest of their born days. The business person’s retirement, known as a defined-contribution plan, or 401(k), is based on the amount he saves and must live on the earnings. He gets out what he puts in. His retirement plan can run out of money, unlike a teacher’s.

And finally we come to health insurance. Teachers pay nothing for theirs, individual. The person in the other business pays at least 25 percent to 30 percent, if not more, of the premium.

Oh, I know they grade papers on their own time. And the person in the other business takes his work home also, or the business person has to travel three days a week away from family. Unfair, really? 2014 graduate, there are two retired educators on the Lindbergh school board and another one was a Democratic state representative. So I would think there is not a lot of objection to the issue you are protesting about unless it is deservedly so.

Let’s move to the educational cartel, the NEA. Do these people ever stop? In the last year taxpayers have been hit with or have been told about tax increases necessary to retain good teachers. From Mehlville, Webster Groves, Kirkwood, Lindbergh and Affton, it is the same mantra. It never stops with the cartel. No district, except maybe Clayton, has a money tree. All the NEA does is keep raising the cost to do business. Unfortunately, the taxpayer is the one who pays the bill.

Almost forgot — remember, it is all about the kids. Well, where were the teachers at the Lindbergh High School graduation?

Getting glasses for their whine?